Yeah, it took me a minute!
For my whole life I’ve been a story-teller. Heck, I can remember being in first grade at Indian Creek Elementary in Marion, Iowa, standing at the chalk board, looking at the grayish black, empty length, chalk clutched in small fingers. All that space to tell a story. It’s still exhilarating to contemplate. Riding home on the bus with my gullible little friend Molly, I told stories about the whale living in our basement. I can still see Molly’s brown eyes growing wide with wonder.
Seriously, everything that happens to me becomes a story to tell. Actually, even the dreary, ordinary things become stories. I LOVE to tell stories. I guess it’s just my personality. All of that translated into high school creative writing courses and three credits short of an English minor at Iowa State University.
Years later, I’ve written lots of freelance articles for magazines and newspapers, spent a few years creating professional resumes and concocted a fantasy series of oral stories about Billy and his pony named Magic for our two sons. Finally, in 2008 on an Alaska cruise, the thought of writing books, which had been lurking in the recesses of my mind for years, had the opportunity to crystallize.
By that point I’d worked in the airline industry for eight years and lived through the events of September 11, 2001, in brutal, living color. I’d been to Ground Zero while bodies were still being brought out. I’d had a behind the scenes “tour,” courtesy of someone who was either an NYPD officer or an angel; perhaps both. Many of you have read my Substack post about that encounter.
In the fall of 2009, encouraged by my awesome husband Ernie, I started toying with the idea of writing thrillers that involved the terror attacks of 9/11. I’d met some Iranian students at Iowa State and loved their humor, kindness and intelligence. Reading security circulars every week at the airport about the threats to civil aviation by Islamic terrorists spawned lots of ideas.
All of this distilled into a series of “what if” scenarios in my crazy mind. Eventually the scenarios coalesced into what became THE ROWAN MILANI CHRONICLES, featuring an Iranian-American protagonist. Since that auspicious beginning, I’ve managed to write five “thrillers” in the series.
And that brings me to the point of this post. Thanks to astute comments by a couple of super interesting, talented and intelligent friends, I have come to some serious conclusions about my “thrillers.” First is Tim. Here’s his Substack: https://timmytaes.substack.com/, which I highly recommend. His posts are always entertaining and interesting. He read Consummate Betrayal (Book One in the series) and shared comments with me after each chapter.
What started me thinking was this comment: “You don’t follow the thriller formula.” Hmmm. How did I miss this??? Another friend, Carrie Taylor Goldberg has written an incredible book titled “A Taste of Israeli Life.” You can find it here. It’s a vivid, eye opening experience of life in Israel. Trust me, you want to read it! https://www.westbowpress.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/706035-a-taste-of-israeli-life
Carrie and I have talked extensively about her book and my series. While hanging out with me at a flea market while I marketed my books, she commented to a potential reader about what interesting stories my books portrayed.
What struck me was the word stories. Not thrillers. I will admit, it takes me a while to process things. But after percolating both Tim’s comment and Carrie’s, I came to some interesting conclusions. And, I have come to realize, my books are just that…stories about my characters. Primarily Rowan Milani, of course, my Iranian-American protagonist.
All through the series, I have been committed to telling the story of not just Rowan. I wanted to tell the story of his parents, especially his mother, who wounded him terribly and drove him away from any possibility of a relationship with her or his father or God. Could she, or would she, evolve? Could their relationship be redeemed?
His colleagues/friends suffered for him also. They are loyal and courageous and gave up everything for him. How would they fare? What about the woman who loved him unconditionally? What about the guy who hated him with a passion because Rowan stole the woman he loved? He was such a sad sack…
I wanted to tell the story of the Muslim Brotherhood operating in the United States, my country, for God’s sake, as Rowan would say, with impunity…to this day. My books are fiction, for sure, but a lot of what they portray is NOT fiction, it is happening or has happened in our country. The Muslim Brotherhood is indeed highly networked in our government. To be ignorant of that is simply naïve. Both democrats and republicans are either stupidly, or deliberately unaware.
The word “journey” is a terrible cliché, I know. But that is what my stories portray; i.e. Rowan’s journey through arrogant self-assurance to humility and eventually, I hope, to redemption. His loyal friends, family and colleagues have struggled along with him. They have families and relationships and all of them suffer from the fallout of his actions.
The result of my REFLECTION on all this is the big REVELATION that I do not follow the formula for “thrillers.” UH OH! I owe a debt of gratitude to Tim and Carrie for helping me to finally see this reality. I guess I don’t actually write classic thrillers. I just write stories about people struggling to live through the results of their imperfect choices, their faults…and the inevitable fallout affecting everyone they love and everything they set out to do.
Here are my final thoughts. If you like real stories, not just formulaic plots, then you will enjoy, or may I be so bold to say…LOVE my stories. They are not just thrillers. They are portrayals of people who act, driven by the all-to-human emotions of love, pride, anger and revenge. They reap what they sow in spades and I revel in revealing their motivations and the stories they inspire.
Recently the Rowan Milani Chronicles 1-3 was free; including Consummate Betrayal, Unholy Retribution and A Different Man. To continue, the eBook of the fourth in the series, Terminal Redemption, will be FREE from April 21st – April 25th. Here’s the link! Check it out!! https://a.co/d/4RzVkUb
The ROWAN MILANI CHRONICLES 